Week 2 — Drill Studio · Pulse in the Body

Course: MUS 155 Aural Skills I · Kenosis College
Instructor: Professor Hemsworth
Unit: Learning Unit 2 of 15 (Week 2) · two sessions per week
Objectives: SLO 3 · SLO 4
Drill Studio 2 · 20 points · Drill-studio group · In session, both meetings (session 1 and session 2) · documented make-up path below, full credit, submit by the end of the week
Format: hands, voices, and — for the first time — pencils. Bring something to write with; scratch paper is provided.

Named in Music Theory I: note and rest values, the dot, ties, simple meter, time signatures, barlines, "1 e & a" counting, anacrusis, beaming. An hour later, all of it goes into your hands and out of your mouth.

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Part 1 — The big picture

Last week you proved you could keep a pulse and feel its grouping. In this morning's theory session the pulse got its page: values, bars, counting syllables. This studio welds the two together — you'll clap patterns back, count them out loud, call meters by their new names, and, in the week's headline event, write down a rhythm you only heard. That's dictation, and from this week it never leaves the course.

Part 2 — What we do

The do ritual (every session, always). The chord pattern, the home tone, the arch sung back on "loo." Two minutes, then hands.

The rhythm echo ladder (both days). Clap-back patterns that climb from plain quarters to divided beats to — session 2 — a note that hangs across the barline. From rung three, every second echo is clapped while counting aloud: the numbers ride the claps. That pairing is the week's whole trick, and it goes with you to every band rehearsal you'll ever count in.

Counting aloud, from the page (session 1). Two printed lines, counted, clapped, then both at once. Here is the first — notice bar two opens with a half note, so the count on "1" lasts two beats before the rest, and the rest itself is counted silence, not nothing:

KEY: C major    METER: 4/4    CLEF: treble
| B4/q B4/q B4/e B4/e B4/q | B4/h qr B4/q |

The second line moves to 3/4 — three beats to the bar, the weight returning faster, the eighth pair tucked right after the long opening note:

KEY: C major    METER: 3/4    CLEF: treble
| B4/h B4/e B4/e | B4/q B4/q B4/q |

Meter by ear — with the words (both days). Last week you showed twos and fours on your fingers. As of this morning they have names — duple and quadruple — and a third pattern joins them: triple, the weight returning every three. Patterns play with their natural accents; you call the classification.

The first rhythmic dictation (session 1, again in session 2). Taught as a ritual you'll run all semester: hearing one — pens down, tap the beat. Hearing two — count along, softly. Hearing three — write. Two bars, values you've clapped all week. The answer matters less than the machine; by the final you'll run this ritual on four-bar melodies without thinking about it.

Ties across the barline (session 2). One clap, two bars. The third printed line shows the shape — the dotted half in bar two is tied into the dotted half after it, so bar three begins with no new attack; count through it and feel the barline pass under a note that refuses to end:

KEY: C major    METER: 3/4    CLEF: treble
| B4/q B4/q B4/e B4/e | B4/h.~ | B4/h. |

Partner sheets A and B (session 2). You and a partner each get a different half-sheet of cards — yours stays out of your partner's sight. A claps a card at a steady 80; B taps, counts, and writes, three hearings, the ritual way. Then you swap roles with the other set. Both of you sign the attestation line — a sentence confirming the cards were performed as written and unseen before writing. It's the course's honesty muscle, and it comes back in every at-home dictation protocol.

Pitch-matching maintenance (both days, two minutes). A held tone, a short "loo" echo. The syllable system arrives in Unit 4; until then the matching ear stays warm.

Solo hearings. Quick individual turns inside the echo ladder and counting segments — 6 to 8 students per session, which at a full section of 36 means every voice is heard solo about once every two and a half weeks; in a smaller room, everyone, every time.

Part 3 — Before session 1 (the prep step)

Run Tutorial 2 first. It drills the conversion this studio assumes: counting string to notation and back, in words, with your AI tutor. Twenty minutes, and the counting-aloud segment will feel like a rerun instead of a cliff.

Part 4 — What counts, and how

Participation is the grade: clap, count, call meters, write dictation, guess wrong out loud, fix it. 20 points, graded in session across the two meetings. The standing lens, unchanged all semester:

Criterion weights: perception 50 · realization 35 · labeling 15

A student who sings the right pitches with the wrong syllables loses only the labeling points. A student who sings the right syllables on the wrong pitches fails the item.

This week the same law wears its rhythm clothes: a clap-back that lands every attack with a shaky count loses only labeling points; a perfect counting string chanted over the wrong rhythm fails the item. The sound is the point; the words serve the sound. And the standing octave and play-it-instead rules from Unit 1 hold whenever pitch is involved.

Criterion	Full	Partial	None
Perception — meter calls and dictation show real hearing: attacks heard as attacks, held notes as held, wrong calls revised by re-listening (10)	9–10	5–8	0–4
Realization — echoes land at tempo; ties carry without a re-attack; partner cards performed steadily; written dictations match what sounded (7)	7	4–6	0–3
Labeling — counting strings and the new meter words (duple, triple, quadruple) applied rightly to what you heard (3)	3	2	0–1

Part 5 — Missed a session? The make-up path

Full credit, no penalty, by the end of the week. At home: (1) run the practice page's daily loop for the days missed; (2) record two clips — one clap-and-count of any practice-page drill, one clap of the tie drill proving no re-attack across the barline; (3) take one self-dictation using the practice page's partner or metronome protocol and photograph what you wrote; (4) add two sentences diagnosing your clips with the error classes. Submit clips + photo + sentences in Canvas under this studio's make-up assignment.

Why this makes you a better musician

Every ensemble you will ever play in runs on somebody's steady count-off and everybody's shared bar line. This week you become the player whose "one, two, three, four" actually means four equal things — who feels a waltz go by in threes without checking, holds a note across the barline without flinching, and can write down the riff the drummer just played instead of asking for it again. Next week the beat itself learns to split three ways.

Canvas placement block

canvas_object    = Assignment
title            = "Unit 2 Drill Studio — Pulse in the Body"
assignment_group = "Drill studios"
points_possible  = 20
grading_type     = points
submission_types = [on_paper]        # graded in session; make-up: online_upload (clips + photo + sentences)
due              = in session, both meetings; make-up by the end of the week
published        = true

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